The Youth of Today...

Complaints and frustrations about “the youth of today” have been around since long before 1964 when Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson wrote their book “Generation X” about interviews with British youth who told them that they took drugs, hate the Queen, don’t believe in God and slept with each other before they got married.

Today, in our law firms and the world at large, the debate rages on. The subject has been hyped up to such a point that some suggest that what we are experiencing is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the way young adults think (their “cognitive style”) as opposed to just an attitudinal or behavioral shift.

Hamblett and Deverson’s research subjects are now in their sixties. Smoking pot at rock concerts is a distant memory (for those that did) as they now contemplate retirement.

by Karen MacKay, MBA, CHIC
President

and Robert Millard

The
youngsters that are entering practice today,
though, seem in many ways to be a completely
new species. They lack the youthful
rebelliousness that characterized the late teens
and twenty-somethings of the sixties, seventies
and even eighties. They are more socially and
environmentally aware. Lifestyle and work/life
balance is very important. They are completely
at home with technology. Unlike us “old people”
who had to learn to use technologies like
internet, email, blogs, instant messaging and
wikis as adults, these kids never knew a world
without them.

There is no compelling evidence to support the
theory that what we are witnessing is a
fundamental shift in cognitive style. The change
is indeed attitudinal and behavioural.
Psychologists specializing in how cognition
develops through adulthood point out that young
adults emerge from adolescence with their
critical thinking and abstraction abilities fully
formed. What happens during early adulthood
and onwards through life is that an individual’s
style of thinking is molded by experience. Views
of life-work balance should therefore change at
least somewhat the as realities of mortgages and
school fees take hold, and most leave their
adolescent idealism behind.

Will this happen with the current generation of
young adults beginning to practice in law firms
around the world? The answer, without doubt, is “yes.” Today’s twenty-something associate will
likely think differently with the maturity,
wisdom and obligations of their thirties, forties
and beyond. That does nothing to change the fact
that today’s young adults do have significantly
different attitudes to what those in positions of
leadership in firms had at the same age, though.
There is also no doubt that today’s young
professionals have significantly more advanced
technological skill sets than their seniors. They
get very frustrated when their seniors don’t “get”
what is obvious to them. These differences are
causing issues that firms need to address.

Why is that? Members of the newest generation
of your professionals were born since 1980.
Like every generation they have been influenced
by economic, political and personal events that
influenced them during their formative years,
mostly ages 10 through 15. These include:

If they grew up in Europe or North
America, they grew up in a time of
economic growth with parents who
wanted to give them everything. They
are not familiar with going without or
waiting for what they want.. On the
other hand, they have also witnessed the
dotcom crash and other economic
crises, 9/11 and similar events in
Europe, the threat of terrorism as a
global phenomenon and a war in
Afghanistan and Iraq that has involved
many countries and has now lasted
longer that WWII.

They grew up with a far wider selection
of communication technologies than
even their Generation X colleagues
(born between 1966 and 1979). They
are therefore fully aware of the
flexibility and efficiency that these tools
allow, at a time when older adults are
still struggling to get to grips with them.
For Generation Y the cell phone and the
PDA are a lifeline giving them freedom
and flexibility; for their Generation X
colleagues – just five or ten years older
these same tools are a tether that ties
them to the office and erodes their quest
for a balanced life.

Adult child relationships have evolved
considerably in western society over the
past few decades, which means that
these young adults grew up with far
more freedom of expression and
disagreement as children than even the
generation before them.

The effects are showing up in many ways.

Career Development Officers at law
schools get calls from parents, if not the
students themselves, to question their
son or daughter’s marks.

First year lawyers, while pleased with
their job offer, question everything and
attempted to negotiate the terms of their
very first job.

Rather than straighten up and tuck in
their shirt when the senior partner goes
by, they youngest lawyers are likely to
call “him” over to discuss something
about the firm.

Where are they on Saturday morning?
Out for a run, at yoga class or enjoying
their lifestyle. If they are working, it is
on a laptop at home. Who needs an
office, especially if it is an hour or more
commute away?

A cell phone, a laptop computer and no
watch? Sure. ‘No watch’ may seem an
interesting contradiction in a business
driven by the billable hour, but one can
tell the time as easily with a cell phone
as with an instrument strapped to the
wrist!

As with many things, it is one thing to identify
and describe an issue. It is another to solve it.
How does one address the current generation of
young professionals in such a way as to attract
and retain the best talent and also to extract the
maximum value out of them for the firm? There
are many firms that are successfully meeting this
challenge. What they say works includes:

Accept that firms are not likely to retain
most of them so make every effort to
accelerate their development and make
them profitable as quickly as possible.

Clarify work expectations explicitly,
involve them in discussions about the
firm’s future, acknowledge their
contribution and support their
development.

Seduce promising youngsters with
challenging work and performance
targets BUT give them the tools to help
them work their way, not yours.

Don’t only look not at law school and
academic marks when choosing talent.
Test for entrepreneurialism, drive and
other characteristics too.

Pay more but with performance-linked
targets / deferred payouts etc to ensure
that the higher compensation is
balanced with improved productivity.

Educate young associates in realities of
law firm economics and share as much
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financial data with them as possible, so
that they can clearly understand the
context both of their compensation and
their performance requirements.

Foster social networks within the firm
and focus on developing a sense of
community through use of Enterprise
2.0 tools. They might not be loyal to
your firm but they typically are very
loyal (even intensely loyal) to their
friends.

Provide resources for self-development.
These young lawyers are resourceful
and dynamic so don’t hold them back.

Most partners in law firms today remember
being told: “if you stay with us you’ll figure this
stuff out”. Our youngest lawyers have grown up
with a different pace. They have never waited
and are not going to tolerate being asked to start
now. They are not interested in “paying their
dues.” They are not interested in the partners’
stories about walking three miles to school
everyday (up hill both ways). They do, however,
need clarity in terms of expectations. Be very
clear about your expectations in terms of timing
and work product – worry more about results
than about where and how they get the work
done.

The good news, for those to whom the whole
phenomenon of Generation Y is strange and
frustrating, is that the challenge exists equally for
all firms. Those firms that are coming to terms
with it best are finding opportunities as well as
challenges. Especially in terms of improving
firm-wide efficiencies through deploying
Enterprise 2.0 technologies and flexible work
practices that, ironically, are greatly to the
benefit of baby boomers wanting to retire
gradually, too.

These youngsters are also far more adept at
dealing with change. Strategically, they are a rich
resource of ideas about how best to drive the
firm forward in today’s rapidly changing,
unpredictable marketplace. They see change as a
challenge to be conquered, not something
undesirable to be feared. They don’t yet have the
depth of wisdom that comes only from
experience, so their ideas often need to be
tempered, but the sense of innovation, creativity
and optimistic enthusiasm that many of today’s
middle aged professionals had driven out of them
in university seems to have survived better in
these youngsters.

The potential that this holds for firms in today’s market, with the challenges that we face in this turbulent 21st Century, is enormous!